There's an article in the Daily Mail today (here) about deformed and retarded native Americans born to mothers with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). FAS is a genetic condition that causes babies in the womb to suffer very badly from the effects of alcohol consumed by their mothers. Its prevalence varies markedly between populations, being especially high among sub-Saharans (including the sub-Saharan diaspora) and native Americans.

What causes the differentiation and why does it matter? It is caused by differing degrees of adaptation to the circumstances of settled agriculture, and it matters because it generally serves as a good indicator of how civilised a population is. Civilisaton, in the most basic sense, is the adoption of settled agriculture as mode of life. This is perhaps the most important transition in the history of evolving humanity. Taking up settled agriculture as a way of life sets in motion numerous genetic changes in the population. For example, compared to nomadic hunting and gathering, in a settled agricultural environment, people who exhibit self-discipline, foresight and acceptance of authority will be eugenically favoured.

Acceptance of authority begins to matter because settled agriculture creates storable wealth which can then be appropriated by elites. After that, living in the context of hierarchy becomes a permanent part of the human condition. People who challenge authority will usually be killed, taking their genes out of the gene pool. Thus the quality of contumacity or "uppitiness" is eugenically disfavoured.

As I have said, settled agriculture establishes a set of eugenic stimuli that favour the reproductive success of people with certain characteristics and disfavour the reproductive success of people with other characteristics. Over time, this gradually alters the genetic make-up of the population but, because the eugenic effects play out in the form of slight but systematically varying birth rates, the differences between one generation and the next will usually be small. Over the course of centuries, or millenia, however, these small differences add up and can become very significant indeed.

Generally the characteristics favoured by settled agriculture would still be associated with societal success today; and vice versa. This undoubtedly explains many of the problems of Africans, both within Africa and without. Sub-saharans only adopted settled agriculture between 1-2000 years ago, while Europeans adopted it 3-4000 years ago. This means that we have undergone 2000 more years of genetic adaptation to "civilisation" than sub-Saharans have. Of course our ruling class cannot admit this because its guiding dogma is that "people are all the same". But Fetal Alchohol Syndrome is living proof to the contrary.

Why is FAS a marker for adaptation to settled agriculture? Because alcohol and settled agriculture go hand in hand. They develop at the same time. Alcohol is made from the products of agriculture. Just as with "hierarchy", once the transition occurs, dealing with alcohol becomes a permanent part of the human condition. And just as with "hierarchy", some people, such as those with FAS, can't handle it. They, too, will be eugenically disfavoured, meaning they will, on average, have fewer surviving offspring than others, ensuring that they constitute an ever-diminishing share of the population.

Because Europeans have been adapting to civilisation for 3-4000 years, the prevalence of FAS among European women is only 1%. For Sub-Saharan women, it is 10%. Thus the prevalence of FAS acts as a marker for how "civilised" a population is.

When I first became involved in anti-Islam activism, I clung to the "No to Racism" line that we are all brainwashed into believing and that the Counterjihad movement has espoused. The intellectual journey of exploration I have been on since then, however, has convinced me that there are profound and important differences between populations at the genetic level.
Almost any culture has eugenic effects of the kind I have described above. Status (for males) correlates systematically with reproductive success in almost all anthropological studies, meaning high-status males leave behind more surviving offspring than lower-status males. But what determines status? Culture determines status. One culture may value excellent spearmanship while another exalts religious scholarship. Thus the differential assignment of status through culture, and the systematic association of status with reproductive success, is the core mechanism through which one people comes to differ genetically from another people. In time, any culture ultimately comes to have a genetic embodiment in the people who practice it. Our genes are the result of, and physically embody, the choices our ancestors made, including moral choices.

We must challenge and ultimately jettison the dogma that all people are genetically the same. It is simply false as a matter of scientific truth, but it is also harmful, because policies based on scientific mistruth must necessarily be sub-optimal. For example are sub-Saharan and native American women appropriately warned of their much greater susceptibility to alcohol or does some government functionary think it would be too stigmatising to draw attention to it?

One of the key books that changed my views on the gene question was The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpenden. If you're a regular reader of this blog, and are interested in going on this intellectual journey with me, I strongly recommend that you read this book. Among other things, it highlights how Jewish scientists such as Lewontin struggled to establish the dogma of Equality within academia, stigmatising the exploration of genetic difference. This has had far-reaching effects that still have not been overcome even today.